Philippe Garrel

Iconoclast and long-time bête noire of
French cinema Philippe Garrel evokes the
glories of sixties Nouvelle Vague in this
beautifully modulated film about the ups
and downs of bohemian life in the luminous
city of our cinematic dream world. Shot in
lustrous black-and-white, the film floats us
back to the Paris of Godard's Vivre sa vie,
Truffaut's Tirez sur la pianiste, Rivette's
Paris nous appartient, and Rohmer's Le
Signe du Lion — a Paris of side streets, bars,
and tiny apartments where people live and
love, sometimes well and sometimes badly.

L'Ombre des Femmes follows a youngish
couple: Pierre (Stanislas Merhar), a
filmmaker shooting a documentary on an
elderly French Resistance veteran; and
Manon (Clotilde Courau), his loyal professional
and domestic partner, happy to make
films with the man she loves. Together they
eke out a marginal existence, staying one
step ahead of their landlord until, one day,
the feckless Pierre meets a young intern at
the film archive where he does his research.
It's not long before he and Elisabeth (Léna
Paugam) are entangled, and for Pierre this
amorous relationship becomes as much of
a constraint as the one from which he is
attempting to escape. Manon and Elisabeth
both find themselves coping with a man who
is far from worthy of their attentions.

Garrel is nothing if not hypercritical of
and hyperrealistic about the narcissism
of his male protagonist. He gains distance
from Pierre through finely constructed
third-person narration (voiced by Garrel's
son, Louis), which offers wry insight into the
ironies of the situation. As Pierre twists in
the wind, especially after a revelation from
Manon, L'Ombre des Femmes carefully dissects
the foibles and follies of a man who
cannot commit, and the frustrations of the
women caught up in his indecision.